Lecturer-researcher in Arab language and literature from the Catholic University of Milan discusses challenges facing the largest denomination of Islam

Faithful gathered at the Moulay Idriss 1st Mosque in the city of Moulay Driss Zerhou, Morocco, on July 26, 2018. (Photo by Fadel Senna/AFP)

The Oasis Foundation has adopted the theme “Sunni Islam: Malaise and Renewal” for its 2018 research program.

Martino Diez, scientific director of the foundation and lecturer-researcher in Arab language and literature at the Catholic University of Milan, explains the reasons for the project.

"Sunnism is losing its capacity to achieve compromise, which has been its great social and political strength until now," he told La Croix'sAnne-Bénédicte Hoffner in this exclusive interview.

La Croix: Why has the Oasis Foundation, which was founded in 20014 by Cardinal Angelo Scola, then archbishop of Venice, and which is devoted to Islamic-Christian dialogue, chosen the theme “Sunni Islam: Malaise and Renewal”?

Martino Diez: The Arab Spring certainly illustrated the political antagonism that exists between Saudi Arabia and Iran. But it also revealed a theological crisis within Sunnism, which is facing challenges internally both from Salafists and the new Islamic thinkers.

For centuries, Sunnism has managed to achieve a compromise between the various visions of Islam, with each more or less recognizing the legitimacy of the others.

Jonathan Brown, an American specialist in Islamic science, offers an interesting metaphor on this point, I think.

He compares Sunnism to a tent created during the eighth century out of the quarrel between the rationalists or mu’tazilites and the upholders of the hadiths or prophetic traditions.

Over the course of centuries, this tent developed and was able to provide shelter to Sufis, the four schools of law, two theological schools (Ash’arites and Maturidites) and various forms of popular religiosity.

Sunnism even almost arrived at the point of tolerating several heterodox sects within Islam.

Now, facing the shock of entering modernity, that tent has started to shrink while several currents it formerly sheltered have now been expelled.

Sunnism is losing its capacity to achieve compromise, which has been its great social and political strength until now.

Does this evolution explain the current violence within the Muslim world?

Yes, the historian Suleiman Ali Mourad in his book “La mosaïque de l’islam” (The mosaic of Islam) published by Fayard, compares the situation of classical Sunnism with an academic conference of today.

In principle, and even though they have different points of view, speakers nearly always end up agreeing. And in the evening they go out and have drinks together.

For a long time, the ulemas, the Muslim savants, mutually recognized each other because they made use of the same mechanisms of developing knowledge.

Today that is no longer the case. The religious field has become fractured and the currents in Islam are now competing ferociously internally.

All those speaking in the name of Islam tend to reformulate it based on their own agenda, which is mostly political.

The most violent currents, particularly the Salafists, benefit from this disintegration. The outcome is violence by jihadists against Sufis and by governments against various currents of political Islam, etc.

From where could such a renewal emerge?

Our research project, which is supported by the Milan-based Cariplo Foundation, aims to identify locations of 'change.'

In the Islamic tradition, change has often been perceived negatively as 'innovation' or 'bid’a' and thus condemned.

However, change also appears positively as 'tajdid' or in other words renewal.

One famous hadith even promises that a 'revivalist' will be sent at the beginning of each century.

We have chosen two places to illustrate this.

The first is Morocco, where there is currently a Malachite Islamic reform movement under the auspices of the king, who is also the commander of believers. Pope Francis will visit there in March 2019.

The second is the United Arab Emirates, particularly Abu Dhabi. The policy of the latter is different, consisting of an attempt to identify a 'nucleus of values' from within the Muslim tradition that is free of any political implications.

Our researchers have visited each location. We are also organizing meetings between European researchers or working in the Islamic institutions with whom we are in contact.

Our journal which is published in Italian, English and French, is also available in Arabic in electronic form. We want to contribute to the debate.

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